It Could Be Worse
by Not Another Penguin
Summary: She was the most infuriating person who couldn't be further from his type if she tried. And yet, the more time he spent with her, the more he realised he didn't only enjoy her company, he looked forward to it.


_Hello everyone!_

_I've been in two minds about posting this for a while now. I've only just become addicted to Rush (I've got to the last episode of the second season, but started writing this towards the beginning of season 2, so it's set about then). I'm not entirely sure if I've got the characters right, so I'm really sorry if they seem OOC, but I have tried. It really did start of as being a one shot, but my brain won't let me stop the story. That being said, if you think it sucks, then yeah, it's a one shot. It will mainly be from Lawson's POV - I just wanted him to smile once in a while!_

_Do I really need to write a disclaimer? I mean, it's obvious the show doesn't belong to me. If it did, I wouldn't be writing bad fanfiction about it!_

* * *

><p><strong>It Could Be Worse<strong>

"Who the hell are you texting at this time of night?" a bemused female voice asked.

Lawson Blake looked up from the text message he was reading and, taking care to keep it angled away from the camera on his chest, as well as Stella – the one who had asked the question and who was half attempting to read it over his shoulder – and Michael, who was driving, shook his head. "No one," he responded in his usual gruff manner, indicating Stella should drop it before she started it.

Possibly because it was 3am and nearing the end of their shift, thankfully, she did. Lawson settled back into his seat and continued to decipher the text message.

"**OMG! I have just had the most horrific, heart stopping moment – it beats anything U have EVER had to deal with, EVER!"**

Lawson's lips twitched as he typed back his reply. **"Really? More heart stopping than having to stop an armed suspect holding up a servo?"**

He wasn't surprised when his phone beeped at him, moments later. **"R U trying 2 make my heart stop again? I want details L8R (N U know I'm gonna read that report – so no withholding evidence!) But hell yeah! T'was more heart stopping than ANYTHING u've encountered!"**

"**Alright, what happened?"**He text back, certain it wouldn't be much more than a CD skipping.

By night, Alexandria 'Lexi' O'Brien was a DJ. She had bright, electric blue streaks in her artificially darkened hair; was ten years younger than him (and frequently looked fifteen years younger); She drank that much Red Bull Lawson wouldn't have been surprised if she bled the stuff; She listened to, and DJ'd… well, it was all noise to him; She talked far too much in that low, English accent she hadn't lost in ten years of living in Australia; She had this tendency of kicking her shoes off and forgetting where she left them. She also had an annoying habit of calling him Mr Serious – and repeatedly telling him "it could be worse" – hence her over-dramatic text.

In short, she was the most infuriating person who couldn't be further from his type if she tried.

And yet, despite the list of things that annoyed him about her, the more time he spent with her, the more he realised that he not only enjoyed her company – he actually looked forward to it.

When Lawson realised Lexi was either busy working, or busy composing a lengthy reply, he slipped his phone into his pocket and glanced back at Stella. "How's your arm?"

Even though it was clear the idiots holding up the servo earlier were never going to get away, that hadn't stopped one of them. When Stella had gone to cuff him, he had tackled her into a display.

"Better than his," Stella snorted.

Although inwardly he was smiling, externally he gave Stella a disapproving glare. She might have received a bruised arm, but the suspect had received a few cracked ribs _and_ a bruised ego. "Head back in, Michael," he added.

They were nearly back when he received Lexi's exceptionally long reply. Apparently she had run to the loo and gotten locked in the back area – with time running out on her track. When none of the five potential exits had worked – including a fire exit – she had resorted to climbing out of a window, running around the block to enter though the main entrance, and returned to the decks with seconds to spare. **"C! UR armed Bulgaria has nothing on this!"**

He declined to call her on, what he was hoping was, the autocorrect on her phone. **"Why was the fire exit locked?"**

"**And out of all that, the thing U pick up on is a locked firedoor? Don't U dare do anything about it! I actually like this job!"**

"**As opposed to your day job?"**

"**Well there are some perks 2 the day job…"**

Lawson's lips twitched again. **"Do tell."**

"**Isn't it obvious? The people I work with. Leon is awesome! :-P"**

This time, Lawson smiled. During the day Lexi worked at the station. Originally hired to type up their old reports so they could be stored digitally, she had somehow become something of an assistant to Kerry and Leon. Unfortunately, as Lawson well knew, he and Lexi shared similar opinions towards Leon.

"Considering you're texting _no one_ at this ungodly hour, _no one_ is making you smile," Stella noted, smirking when Lawson gave her his silencing stare.

His phone beeped in his hands and he glanced down. **"I really want a portion of fish n chips from Big Al's. Fancy a bite to eat after your shift?"**

"**Big Al's?"**

"**Best chippy in Sydney!"**

"**I'm not driving to Sydney."**

"**I never said U had 2! I just said I wanted their f&c! Pick me up and I'll treat U 2 some munchies."**

"**I'm not eating at this time in the morning."**

"**I'll C U in an hour or so! xxx"**

"Have you got a girlfriend you haven't told us about?" Michael asked as they pulled into the station.

Lawson looked momentarily surprised at his colleague. "If I was, I wouldn't tell you."

"Well, that's code for yes," Stella laughed. "Is it Kerry?"

Lawson gaped at her in disbelief. "Piss off," he shot at her, heading into changing room.

Michael turned to Stella, laughing. "You're going to be washing the cars for months."

"I know," Stella told him. "But it was _so_ worth it."

* * *

><p>He very nearly went straight home to bed, but at the last minute, Lawson took a different exit. It was the gut feeling he had that Lexi would be stood outside the nightclub waiting for him that made him change his mind. Sure enough, she was there, sat on the pavement, her heeled shoes next to her bag as her bare feet tapped in time to the music she was listening to on her iPod. He pulled up beside her and wound his window down.<p>

"You're late," she told him, pulling the ear buds out and sticking them into her bag.

Lawson sat in silence, watching as she slipped her shoes on and finally stood. It was a good job she had been sitting, because he might have driven straight past her otherwise. The only other clothing he had seen her in was mismatching socks (the ratty trainers normally hidden under the desk), blue jeans and a plain top. Tonight, she was wearing a tiny pair of black shorts and a top which dipped dangerously low.

She headed over, walking in front of the car to the passenger side and opened the back door, slinging her bag in before getting in the front. "One day, I'm going to go digital, because once you've got a couple of hundred CDs, they start to weigh a ton," she told him.

"Where's your car?" he asked her.

She sighed. "It's in the garage. The clutch went. So until I can afford to pay for it, I'm bussing it to the club, and I'm biking it into work. I'd ride the bike to the club, but it's a bit difficult to ride when you're wearing heels and lugging that thing about on your back." She looked around, inspecting the car. "And you are never stepping foot in Benjy," she added with a sigh.

"What is Benjy?" Lawson asked curiously.

From the corner of his eye, he watched as she smiled, gently shaking her head. "Benjy is my car, and don't you dare mock me for naming him," she told him, turning to watch him.

Lawson gave her a quick glance before turning his attention back to the road. "Benjy?"

"Yup," she nodded. "Named after an ex."

"You name all your cars after your ex's?" Lawson asked her.

"Two ex's," Lexi corrected him. "And no, it's just Benjy the Bastard. Kyle and I parted on good terms."

"So you named your car after the bad boyfriend?" he asked.

Beside him, Lexi exhaled deeply. "Benjy was a lazy, good for nothing waste of space, who drained me of my money and chose to work if and when he desired. Which was never. It's also the same characteristics as the car I drive. When it pisses me off, I don't feel guilty about yelling at the POS." She turned to him, her mouth falling open. "Oh... My... God!" she exclaimed.

"What?" he demanded.

"You smiled!" she exclaimed. "Hang on," she added a quickly, before mimicking taking a photograph with her hands.

"What are you doing?" he asked her, warily.

"Taking a mental picture so that I can remember this actually happened."

Thankfully they had pulled up at a red light so that Lawson could turn and give Lexi his best disapproving and silencing glare. As he had suspected, it didn't work.

"You really do need to smile more often," she told him. "You spend too much time frowning. And your light is on green."

Lawson shook his head and pulled away. "Where do you live?"

"Senior Sergeant Lawson Blake," Lexi cried in mock outrage. "I'm not that kind of girl. And besides, we're getting something to eat first."

"Lexi, where on earth do you think is going to be open at this time?" he asked her.

Lexi peered up at him, a puzzled expression on her face. "Are you being serious?" she asked, slowly.

He wasn't. He was trying to get her to go home. "Do you have a preference?"

"Take a left up here," Lexi beamed at him. She directed him to a twenty four hour cafe, and barely gave him chance to park before she had unclipped her seatbelt and was practically climbing into the back to root around in her bag, her arse inches from his face.

He scratched his head and waited for her to fall back into the seat, clutching at a bright blue purse, staring up at him with a puzzled expression. "Come on," she told him, pushing his shoulder. She didn't wait for him as she bounded into the cafe. He followed, catching the door before it shut, and found her talking to an old guy. She turned back to him and pointed at a booth. "Sit," she instructed him.

He sat down in the booth she was pointing to and waited for her to join him. She slipped in moments later, followed by the guy she had been talking to. He placed two cans of Red Bull and a glass in front of her. "Can I get you anything?" he asked Lawson.

"Just a bottle of water," he replied.

The guy looked to Lexi. "The usual?"

Lexi shook her head. "I want the Monster," she told him. "And two spoons. Thanks, Gaz."

Lawson watched her as she cracked open both of the cans of Red Bull and poured them into the glass. "You need to give up drinking that, you know?" he told her.

Lexi looked up at him, frowning. "We're not even dating yet and you're trying to change me?" she asked him. "I'm not giving up the Red Bull," she told him. "I don't get enough sleep and I don't think you or Kerry would be particularly impressed if you found me asleep at my desk."

Carefully, Lawson focused his attention on unscrewing the cap on the bottle of water which had just been placed in front of him. _Yet_. She had said, yet. Which implied she thought something was going to happen. Which was slightly puzzling, because yes she was friendly, but she had never implied that she thought of him in that way. Even now, she was reaching for a napkin to wipe away a few drops of the drink she had spilt seemingly unaware of what she had just said. "Maybe you should cut back on your DJing," he suggested.

"Not a chance," Lexi responded. "Aside from the fact I actually enjoy DJing, and the fact it has turned into practically the only social life I have, it pays really well. Right now, I need to get the car fixed, then the wardrobe needs replacing, because that's about five seconds away from collapsing on itself. Plus this hair isn't exactly cheap. So until I get a pay rise, I'm continuing my drug addiction and consuming as much caffeine as is needed to get me through the day." She took a long sip of her drink before setting it back on the table, staring at him thoughtfully. "Or I could get a roommate, I suppose. Halving the cost of the rent and bills would help. But then I need to find someone who would put up with me long enough to pay their half."

_Was that a hint?_ "Has anyone ever told you, you talk too much?" he muttered.

"You," she shrugged. "And Kerry. And Leon. And Michael. And – "

"I get the picture," he told her, cutting her off.

Lexi wrinkled her nose up and nodded. "I didn't use to be like this. There was a time when I couldn't say boo to a goose. Then I spent a year abroad, found some confidence, lost some weight and now I don't shut up. The best thing is to tell me to shut up."

"That doesn't work," Gaz announced, placing the most enormous sundae in between the two of them. "Even food doesn't work."

Lawson stared in disbelief at the amount of ice cream in front of him. "Dig in," Lexi told him, handing him a spoon.

He took it from her, watching her dig her own spoon in and take a large mouthful of chocolate ice cream, then set it down on the table with a long sigh. "Lexi, what are we doing?"

Lexi slowly swallowed the mouthful of ice cream and gave him a puzzled look. "Eating ice cream," she told him. "Or at least I am. I can get Gaz to whip up a cooked breakfast if you prefer?"

"That's not what I meant," he said, watching her carefully.

She chewed on her lip and pushed her hair behind her ear, staring at her reflection in her spoon. Finally, she set it down on the table and leant back, placing her hands in her laps, and looked straight at him. Then she sighed, set her hands down on the seat, either side of her lap, and focused her attention on the sundae. "You know, I live around the corner. You can go if you need to," she said, eventually.

"Not until you stop avoiding the question," he told her.

"Well I don't know how to answer it," she shrugged. "We're not doing anything. We're eating ice cream – _I'm_ eating ice cream," she corrected herself. "Dear God, Lawson, you need to relax a bit. If I thought I stood a chance, I would ask you out, rather than lure you hear under false pretences to get a false date out of you. It's just ice cream. You sounded like you had a tough shift and I thought some ice cream might help. Might make you relax for all of five minutes before you go back to being the Mr Serious I love so much." She raked her hand through her hair. "I don't know. Maybe it was all the excitement tonight, or all the Red Bull... Maybe I should have tried to do this after a day shift." She finally looked up at him and gave him a weak smile. "You really can go, if you want."

He watched as her face slowly heated up. _If she thought she stood a chance?_ She was young, smart, beautiful. More like, if he thought _he_ stood a chance. "You really do talk too much," he said, taking some ice cream.

She blinked and cocked her head at him. "So everyone keeps saying," she responded, reaching for her own spoon again.

"You should give that up," Lawson, told her, repeating his earlier suggestion, as he indicated to the drink beside her. That much of the stuff really couldn't be good for her.

"And what are you going to give up?" she challenged, using her spoon to point at him. "Because if I give something up, it's only fair that you give something up. Balance out the scales."

"By rights, shouldn't I take something up to balance up the scales. You give, I take?"

Lexi laughed. "It's not Christmas. And I don't see how you should get something when I'm going to lose something."

"So you're going to give it up?" he asked her, smiling.

Lexi reached for the ice cream and took a large spoonful. She ate it, looking like she was pondering the question, and then grinned. "Okay," she agreed. "I will give up Red Bull, and in return, you will take something up."

"What?" Lawson asked, suspiciously.

"You have got to do one thing a day that makes you smile," she told him.

Lawson emitted something that sounded like a laugh crossed with a snort. "I do smile, you know."

Lexi shook her head and held her hand up. "One thing a day that makes you smile."

Lawson stared in wonder at the woman in front of him. "You're actually a little bit insane, aren't you?"

"A little bit?" Lexi scoffed. "Please tell me you're not just realising this, because I think you should assess your career choice if that is the case."

"How about you shut up for five minutes and eat this damn ice cream with me?" Lawson suggested. And to his amazement, she gave him a grin, and shut up. Between them, it didn't take long to eat the ice cream, and more importantly, Lawson found he was relaxing. He'd often found he had trouble switching off after a hard shift and he thought he'd been doing a great job at hiding that fact. None of his other team members had ever called him on it. Somehow, she'd picked up on it in a matter of months. "So why won't you let me in Benjy?" he asked, suddenly.

"Dude!" she exclaimed. "Have you seen that POS?"

"I have spent some time wondering what model it is under all that dirt," he admitted, nodding.

"It's not that bad!" she told him with mild outrage. "Although, compared to your anally clean car, I guess it is. Which is why you're never getting in it."

"You know," he mused. "There's this miraculous contraption called a bucket. And you can fill it with warm, soapy water-" he stopped when Lexi threw a chocolate chunk from out of the sundae at him.

"What's that phrase?" she asked him. Without waiting for an answer, she clicked her finger. "You can't polish a turd. So why bother wasting time and energy I don't have on it?"

He smiled, softly shaking his head. The woman had a way with words.

"Aaaaaaanyway," Lexi said, drawing out the word. "I need to tell you about this horrific night, so that you can tell me that it does indeed beat anything that ever happened to you, so that _I_ can say, I told you so." And then she proceeded to give a blow by blow account, complete with hand actions, of what she had text him only a few hours earlier.

By the time he had recounted his night's events, the ice cream had long since been finished, the sun had made an appearance, and the cafe was starting to fill up with commuters after their morning coffee. Suddenly realising just how tired he was, he yawned and rubbed his hand wearily over his face. "How are you not yawning?" he asked Lexi.

She pointed at the glass which had once held Red Bull. Although she hadn't bought herself another can, they had both mutually agreed that she would have the glass in front of her as last. "Just wait until the withdrawal symptoms kick in," she muttered, sliding out of the booth. "We have been here for hours. We should probably go or you're going to hit morning rush hour."

Lawson followed her outside to his car and opened the door for her.

"I was prepared to walk home," she told him. "But at this hour, I think I look like I'm doing the walk of shame."

"Get in the car," he chuckled. It was a short ride to her block of apartments and Lawson quickly pulled up outside it, pulling the handbrake on.

"I'd invite you in, but it's a dump," Lexi admitted, leaning into the car. "Besides, we've both got work later and if I'm not on the energy drinks, I'm going to need all the sleep I can get. Thanks for the ride."

"Thanks for the ice cream," Lawson responded, watching her head into her apartment. He pulled away, getting to the end of her road when he realised that she had left her purse in the footwell. He stared at it for a few moments – until the honking behind him woke him from his trance – and swung the car around, heading back to Lexi's. There was a good chance he was about to make a complete ass of himself, but that didn't stop him from getting out of his car and jogging up the short path to Lexi's front door. He knocked on the door and waited. There was the sound of movement behind the door, and then it opened, revealing Lexi already in her pink flannel pyjamas. She had obviously been in the middle of removing the smokey make up from her eyes, because it was only around the one of them. "Hi."

"Lawson?" she asked, suddenly looking mortified. One hand flew up, covering her makeup-less eye. "What are you doing here?"

"You, uh, left this in the car," he said, handing over the purse.

"Thanks," she muttered, taking it from him.

There was an awkward minute, and Lawson cleared his throat. "So, uh, we're at work at the same time tomorrow, and uh, I was wondering if you wanted a lift in. It would give you a bit more time in bed."

"Um, sure?" Lexi shrugged.

Seeing as the awkwardness wasn't dissipating, Lawson gave her a quick smile. "I'll be going now."

"Bye," she said, closing the door.

Lawson turned, took two paces towards the car, and then turned back on his heel and knocked on the door again. He didn't have to wait as long for Lexi to open the door again. This time, however, she only allowed half of her body to be shown from behind the door. "What are you doing?" he asked, pushing the door back.

"Lawson!" she cried, her hand flying back up to cover her eye.

"You are insane," he told her.

"I am also in my pyjamas," she pointed out. "What are _you_ doing?"

"Lexi," he started, and then sighed. "Will you take your hand away?"

"No!" she cried.

Lawson rolled his eyes and reached for her hand pulling it away from her eye. Just as quickly his other hand flew to her other hand, grabbing it before she could use it to replace the hand that had been covering her eye. "Lexi," he started again. She quickly cut him off.

"Lawson, what the hell are you doing? I'm in my freaking pyjamas, for Christ's sake, and I have no doubt that I look like a complete and utter muppet with my makeup like this. Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow."

When she opened her mouth, to take a breath, he shook his head. "Lexi, shut up. Shut up for five minutes, for once in your life. Shut up."

She closed her mouth, staring at him in astonishment, and nodded.

"Now, in answer to your question, I am here to make good on our deal. That I do something a day to make me smile. So ask." He waited, and realised she was actually listening to him and staying quiet. "Alright, you can talk."

"Ask what?" she asked him, blinking in confusion.

"Earlier tonight, you said you would ask me out if you thought you stood half a chance," he explained as the mortified expression returned to her face.

"I did?" she whispered. "Oh, God, I need to learn when to shut up."

"You didn't mean it?" he asked her, carefully.

"Oh, I did mean it," Lexi told him, her voice still barely above a whisper. "But I didn't mean for it to come out."

This was the closest he had come to seeing her speechless and the show of vulnerability was unexpectedly charming to him. With his hands still clutching at hers, he leant down towards her face. "Ask," he told her.

She licked her lips and swallowed, her eyes wide. "You want to, uh," she cleared her throat. "Go... Out... Sometime?"

"Yes," he told her firmly, closing the gap.

* * *

><p><em>So, on a scale of one to ten, how much did it suck?<em>


End file.
